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Subject-Object Asymmetry in the Second Language Acquisition of English Relatives and Embedded Wh-Questions
1Department of English, Illinois State University, Normal, IL, 61790-4240, USA. hkang@ilstu.edu.
Abstract:
This study examined subject-object asymmetry and developmental sequence in the second language (L2) acquisition of three types of wh-extraction, i.e., English headed relatives, headless relatives, and embedded wh-questions. Sixty-four L1 Korean learners of English completed an elicited imitation task and a grammaticality judgment task. The learners demonstrated a subject advantage in the headed RCs and headless RCs, but an object advantage in the embedded wh-questions, which suggests that they treat embedded wh-questions differently from headed relatives and headless relatives despite the similarities in surface forms. The learners further demonstrated the order of developing headless RCs followed by embedded wh-questions, and subsequently headed RCs, which supports the primacy of headless relatives as a simple nominal in L2 development.
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